Essay: Why Social Media Are Destroying Modern Relationships Through Virtual Validation

Within our social media-centric world, social platforms have grown into the essential pathway we bond with each other.

source: framer.website

What commenced as basic communication channels for preserving relationships has become something exponentially more involved.

The Comparison Trap

Arguably the most destructive factor of social media is the way it promotes constant comparison.

Each swipe through our timelines crushes us with artfully constructed best moments of different stories.

We stumble upon stunning locations, perfect matches, amazing achievements, and fairy-tale family life.

While this happens, our unfiltered existence seem ordinary by contrast.

This continuous display to everyone’s best moments creates impossible standards for our life circumstances.

The Psychological Manipulation Engine

Online communities have been deliberately architected to occupy our deliberate focus.

All components has been expertly engineered to condition our habits.

Limitless streams, habitual intrusions, and algorithmic feeds coordinate to generate perpetual desire.

The ongoing excitement rewires our brains to seek quick affirmation.

When we aren’t witnessing continuous virtual interaction, we face apprehensive, uninterested, or estranged.

The Bond Breaker

Perhaps most concerning is how online engagement sabotages authentic connection.

Genuine human connection needs full attention, genuineness, and precious time together.

Electronic networks constructs impediments to all these elements.

During shared time, constant notifications direct our energy away from our companion authentically available.

Contrary to genuine discussions, we discover we’re mechanically swiping through virtual information.

In place of communicating our honest opinions and emotional states, we get distracted with uploading our situations for digital publicity.

The Virtual Acceptance Syndrome

Digital communication systems has turned the way we look for acceptance and individual value.

Historically we gained our self-regard from genuine successes, self-development, and genuine connections, we presently realize we’re relentlessly pursuing online acceptance.

Validation indicators, replies, propagations, and links evolve into our critical measures for calculating our individual significance.

This external validation grows into ongoing because it’s sporadic, momentary, and basically worthless.

Contrary to concrete results or genuine interpersonal ties, hollow acceptance grants only temporary elation.

The Echo Chamber Effect

Artificial intelligence systems are assembled to provide us with articles that harmonizes with our current mindset.

This builds filter bubbles where we’re constantly exposed to viewpoints that strengthens what we presently feel.

Simultaneously, contradictory viewpoints are screened out, establishing an chronically dividing societal framework.

This isolation influences our friendships, fostering extraordinary measures of animosity between pals, family members, and beloved ones.

The Showing-Off Syndrome

Electronic environments has amplified our natural tendency to measure ourselves to individuals in our network.

What historically was contained within grading ourselves to close associates has stretched to feature boundless remote individuals across continents.

STATS ABOUT DIVORCES/RELATIONSHIPS

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm

https://www.familyrelationships.gov.au/separation

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1441&context=studentpub

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_divorce